


Follow the Line

by letscallitink



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, BAMF Kirk, Five Year Mission, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt Kirk, James T. Kirk & Nyota Uhura Friendship, James T. Kirk Has Issues, Khan gets a chance, Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock Friendship, Protective Bones, Smart Kirk, Spock has no idea what's going on, Star Trek: Discovery references, Star Trek: Enterprise references, Starfleet Academy, Starship Enterprise (Star Trek), Tarsus IV, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-01-06 04:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letscallitink/pseuds/letscallitink
Summary: Jim understood that the past would come back to haunt him one day, but he hadn't imagined that he would be the one to haunt the past. He blames this on his inability to die correctly." Okay, time to do the math, he thought as he snatched a towel off a rack and scrubbed it over his damp body. If it was the twenty-first of October in his third year, that meant that with the leftover days in October, plus November, adding the two and a half weeks of classes that would mark the end of the academic year in December before Christmas, all added up to less than two months. The rest of December would be down time, and then his fourth year would start up on January third, and everything would go relatively smoothly until the destruction of Vulcan on March third. This all gave him… just a little over four months to get his act together before Nero showed up and everything went haywire."… I can do that." "





	1. Sins of the Father

James Tiberius Kirk wasn't very good at dying. He wasn't very good at staying in Sick Bay, either, but he was especially bad at dying.

He had done it before. Multiple times, actually. It never really stuck to him. It was like one of those little sticky rubber toys that you shoot at the glass so that it will stick, but then it ends up falling off after a few seconds because they're cheap toys, y'know? Death was a cheap rubber toy. It never stuck to him for more than a few seconds. Maybe that was where his false confidence came from. Maybe that was why he grinned at Death and Danger and greeted them like old friends. After all, they came to visit him so often. They might never have stuck to him, but he got to know them quite intimately. They were as familiar to him as his own scars.

Something had exploded and people ran screaming. That too, was familiar. What wasn't so familiar was that it had happened in the middle of a speech, and Jim was now being held hostage by a crazy Romulan while the audience had been herded out of the building by a set of timed explosions.

A phaser was pressed against his temple. It was at the wrong angle. If it went off at this very moment, he would get a bad graze, blood all over his face, and maybe a concussion, but it wouldn't blast his brains out, which was obviously what the Romulan wanted to do to him. He wasn't worried. Not just because of the fact that the Romulan was too incompetent to hold a phaser correctly, but because he was eighty-nine years old and he wasn't afraid of much. Old people often weren't, unless they had been scumbags all their lives. Then they were afraid, because whether they believed it or not, all sentient beings had that sense that they would pay for what they had done, in this life or the next. James Kirk didn't believe in karma, or that any amount of good could pay for the bad, or that any good deed he did could wash away the blood of even a single stolen life, but he was settled in that he was very, very sorry.  _Repentant_. He knew that he had done bad things. No amount of good-doing would make up for any of it. He was sorry for them, because that was all that he could be.

It was nice, not being afraid of anything.

"Admiral  _Kirk_ ," the Romulan said, rasping softly the way that most Romulans did when they were angry. Not that Jim knew all that many Romulans, but the few that he had encountered had spoken this way, and they were all very angry. Maybe they just sounded raspy all the time and it had nothing to do with them being angry. "I've always wanted to kill you."

"Wanting to kill me seems to be a running theme with Romulans," Jim admitted. This Romulan didn't look like Nero at first glance, especially not with that Vulcan-esque hair job. But there was something Nero-ish about him; about the angular shape of his face and his coal-dark eyes. Maybe it was that hint of kamikaze-craze on him. Nero had  _reeked_ of crazy. "And I would assume that this is important? You interrupted a speech. It was a good speech."

James T. Kirk wasn't good at dying, but he made some epic speeches, even at his advanced age. Today it was a dedication to the survivors of Vulcan's destruction, and to New Vulcan itself. Spock and Spock's father were there. The absolutely ancient and very, very important T'Pau was there (how she was still alive, Jim wasn't sure. That had to be some Vulcan voodoo). Of course it had been a good speech. It was an awesome speech.

He wondered, briefly, where Spock was. And Sarek, too. Jim couldn't say that he always saw eye-to-eye with Sarek, but he had grown to like the man. Had they gotten out? Was Spock outside, or had he moved against the crowds in order to find out what was happening? Spock was older, just as Jim was, but he hadn't aged as quickly. That hobgoblin-blood did him some good after all. Spock would still be able to beat the illogic out of this scruffy young Romulan. Not that Jim needed to be rescued. Of course not. Not from a Romulan who couldn't even hold a phaser at the right angle. He was James T. Kirk and he did not need to be rescued.

Unimpressed by Jim's snark, the Romulan asked, "Do you know who I am?"

 _You're the guy pointing a phaser at me._  "No."

"My mother's name is T'Ret." He sounded amused. "You met her earlier."

Yes, he had. T'Ret was Vulcan, though, which meant that this Romulan was only half-Romulan. Still obviously Romulan, though. There was a shape to them that couldn't be mistaken for anything else. It was rougher and blunter than the smooth curves and sharp edges that made Vulcans look so crisp and clean even when they were filthy (not that you could very often find a filthy Vulcan, if ever).

"Lovely woman," Jim complimented. "Very logical, unlike you. You must get that from your father."

Maybe insulting the guy who was holding a phaser wasn't the greatest idea Jim had ever had, but he had done it before and it usually worked for him.

The Romulan  _hissed_  angrily. "I am the son of  _Nero_."

Jim could have sworn several ways other than left that Nero didn't have children. But, then again, Nero had also been waiting around for, what was it, twenty-five years? Who knew what Nero had gotten up to in that time? Well, there was the whole Klingon prison planet thing, but other than that, nobody had a clue. Of course, Jim hadn't imagined that the hell-bent Romulan had been getting _side-nookie_ while planning the destruction of the Federation and massacre of innocent peoples, _et cetera, et cetera,_ but it wasn't as though Jim had spent a great deal of time meditating on that subject.

Spock might have, though. Did it seriously _not_  occur to Spock to mention that Nero had left behind some vengeful spawn to ruin Jim's day?

Jim looked up at the Romulan out of the corner of his eye. He had Nero's cheekbones, and that same v-shaped face. And _those eyes_. "I am terribly sorry about that."

Coal eyes met blue and squinted the way Nero squinted. "Really."

"Yeah, I had an absent father too," Jim said, shifting uncomfortably. He was on his knees with his hands behind his head and at his age, he really couldn't hold that position for very long. His legs and shoulders were aching fiercely. His back couldn't take this. The sarcasm-producing centers of his brain, however, worked just fine. "Although, that was kind of Nero's fault. This is just a circle of dead dads, isn't it?"

The Romulan made a noise like the screech of an owl and kicked Jim in the ribs. Hard. And Jim, well, Jim was getting on in age, not to mention that he had taken some rather spectacular beatings throughout his life. His ribs couldn't really handle that kind of abuse anymore. They buckled under the pressure, cracking loudly as Jim was pushed onto his side by the force of the blow. At least he wasn't on his knees anymore.

Jim hit the floor with a dull thud. He coughed and tasted blood on his lips. "What's your name?"

At the unexpected question, the Romulan paused. "Adon."

Now that the phaser wasn't pressed up against his head, Jim took the chance to roll over and take the pressure off of his cracked ribs. This gave him a full view of Adon's face. It was definitely Nero's face. Lips, eyes, bone-structure. It was a Nero-clone with brown hair and pale skin, free of tattoos and scars. Poor boy was too young for this. How  _was_  he so young, anyway? If he was Nero's son, he would have to be… sixty-four years old at the  _very least_. This punk didn't look any older than twenty-some. Was that a Romulan thing? Did they live even longer than Vulcans did?

"Did you know your father, Adon?"

At this, Adon's lip curled into a half-snarl. "I didn't have to."

Jim smiled without humor or any good feeling. "You look like him."

This time, Adon really did snarl.

"My mother wanted to kill you herself," Adon snapped, pointing the phaser at Jim's chest, "but I wanted to take a page from my father's book. Isn't that what you humans say?"

Jim shrugged and regretted it as pain shot through his shoulders. "Depends on the context, but yeah. Which, uh, which page are we talking about, here?"

Adon smiled and clicked up the setting on the phaser. "I'm going to make you watch."

It occurred to Jim that, if he were about ten years younger, he might still have had the dexterity to kick the phaser from Adon's grip and make a break for it. Or at least he could have given Adon a good hard knock to the gut. But Jim was eighty-nine years old and he had no such dexterity. He was rather sure that was the reason why he was the one asked to give this speech. Not because he was Captain James T. Kirk, but because he was a famous man whose age was showing and his health was slipping and that meant that they had to wring all the speeches and honors and snarky one-liners out of him that they could before he kicked the bucket. This was all for the sake of having nice things to put in the last few chapters of his biography, for course.

It was sort of funny, he thought, even as Adon prepared to fire. A Romulan was involved with bringing him into this world, and a Romulan of the same blood was taking him out. Funny, funny, funny. Hilarious. Even Bones would have to think that it was sort of funny. (No, he wouldn't. Bones would have told him to  _shut up and stop being an idiot, Jim, you're about to be killed, damnit_.)

It was too bad that phasers made a _zing_ sound. Going out with a  _zing_ wasn't nearly as good as going out with a bang.

Adon pulled the trigger. Jim was really very disappointed with the fact that he went out with a zing.


	2. It Should've Been Drugs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James T. Kirk dies and gets a very rude, Southern wake-up call.

_"_ _You have not changed," Spock Prime said. He seemed… not_ _**confused** _ _, exactly, not quite that. More like puzzled. It was evident in the tilt of his head, the crease of his brow; the slight twist of his mouth. Jim had gotten good at seeing those things. Both Spocks were more expressive than Vulcans pretended they were, especially Older Spock, and Jim was thankful for that. He had started noticing it in all Vulcans, actually, but especially the Spocks. It had come in handy on quite a few diplomatic missions._

_"_ _I wouldn't say that," muttered Jim. Just to illustrate his point, he tugged at a delicate stripe of grey hair that he usually managed to keep hidden amongst the blond. Not that he had much right to talk about aging – Spock was doing alright with his Vulcan genetics keeping him prime and pretty, but Spock Prime was getting absolutely ancient to the point of looking like he might crumble into dust if a good gust of wind caught him off guard. And he was looking a bit... powdery._

_Their five-year mission was about to begin. He wanted to visit Old Spock, just one last time. Well, one last time that was a guarantee. The truth was that Jim wasn't sure how much longer Old Spock was going to live (what with him being_ _**old** _ _and all), and while chances to make contact might present themselves during the extended mission, Jim wasn't going to count on that. So he came to see Old Spock during his shore leave as often as he could._

_"_ _I'm too young for grey hairs," Jim said, trying to make light of it (even though it was true and he really was far too young to be going grey which means all the stress of reality was catching up to him before it even really started). All of it. "It's Bones who did this to me. It's gotta be. I'm too young, Spock, too young!"_

_Spock, with skin powder-white and as wrinkled as a raisin, smiled. Really smiled. Not that joyful, full-cheeked, teeth-bared smile that Jim had been privileged to see just a handful of times, but a small, simple smile. Just an honest quirk of the lips that Jim had come to recognize as a sign of Spock's good temper._

_"_ _The Jim that I knew changed very much with age," Spock said. That almost-not-there smile deepened in his wistfulness. "You have not. And I do not believe that you will."_

_Jim shrugged. He had learned not to give too much thought to Spock's compare-contrast musings. "What's the matter, Spock? Am I too different from myself?"_

_"_ _No, no." Spock shook his head slightly. "I am…_ _**glad** _ _to see you this way. You have gone through many hardships, some… some harsher than he ever faced, but you have not allowed yourself to bend beneath the weight. It makes me feel lighter to know that you may endure where he struggled."_

_Jim grinned at the time-traveler and pretended that it would last forever._

 

* * *

 

Everything was right on the edge of sleep, in that murky dream-state where the sleeper was aware but not quite awake. Jim sighed, rolling deeper into the warm, heavy comfort that was wrapped around him like a blanket. Maybe it  _was_  a blanket. He didn't know and he didn't care. He only knew that it was warm and good and he would stay for as long as he could, because he hadn't felt so comfortable in years. His body's aches and pains just hadn't allowed for it, and he was allergic to all of the medications that might have brought him any relief. No, this was nice, and he was going to stay like this. At least until someone forced him to get up. It would probably be Spock or even Sarek, since they had let him stay with them while he was… visiting… no, he… what was he doing? He was giving a speech. For New Vulcan, or something.

_Just enjoy this. Stop worrying._

But, no, hadn't he given that speech? He remembered…

_"_ _Hello. On behalf of the Federation, I thank you all for coming here today. And, though I know that many consider this to be a day of grief and mourning for the lost world of Vulcan, it is my belief that everything integral to Vulcan, its culture and its spirit, has been preserved and propagated here on–"_

And then… an explosion? No, that was all just a dream. He had practiced that speech in the mirror  _so many times_  that he was even  _dreaming_  of it now. And not just that, but the anniversary of Vulcan's destruction had apparently sparked up some old memories, because he was sure that he had dreamed of Nero. Of all things…. Jim scoffed lightly, pressing himself further into the soft comfort of this half-lucid state. It was all just a dream. Spock would wake him up when it was time to get ready, and he would get up then, but not a moment before. Nuh-uh. Not when everything felt so good. Maybe it was the clear air that had done him good, or was it the food? Maybe Spock or Sarek would know. After all those years of Bones telling him that Earth was the best thing for a human being, here was–

"Up'n at'em, Jim. Disaster awaits."

Jim's breath caught in surprise. _Bones?_

"Jim, c'mon, man. Don't do this to me. It's too early."

Yeah, that definitely sounded like Bones. But Bones had been dead for years. Oh, if this was Spock playing some sort of sadistic Vulcan joke on him, Jim was going to kill the pointy-eared… hobgoblin. This just wasn't funny.

"Jim, if you don't get up right this minute, I am leavin' you here and when I come back I'm gonna be madder'n a wet hornet, y'understand?"

"Spock, stoppit," Jim muttered, annoyed as has comforting half-sleep state started to slip away. A heavy hand thumped against his shoulder.

"What? What the hell did you sleep with last night that was called  _Spock_?"

Jim groaned crankily, pressing his palms to his eyes. A sharp clattering sound broke out on his right and he felt the heady warmth of sunlight shaft violently across his face. Was it that late already? New Vulcan was prone to murky, lavender-tinted mornings that kept the stars visible in the clear skies even after the day was half-gone. Hot sunrises were practically unheard of, especially since New Vulcan had a white sun instead of a yellow one.

Bracing himself for a headache-inducing burst of light and a smarmy Vulcan with a hologram Bones, Jim reluctantly forced his eyes open.

There was definitely a burst of light that made his retinas burn, but the smarmy Vulcan was nowhere to be found and the hologram Bones was… very, very young-looking. And  _angry_ -looking.

The dark-haired, tan-skinned Bones  _scowled_  at him in a red cadet's uniform that hadn't been used in the Academy since Jim was in the Academy himself. Light that was too yellow for New Vulcan flooded a grey-walled room that was far too militaristic to be in Spock's house. Jim shifted in a bed that was definitely smaller than the one he had fallen asleep on in Spock's house, grunting in surprise at a dull pain in his chest that hadn't been there before. His eyes adjusted to the light, taking in the real, solid appearance of Leonard McCoy, who was standing at the foot of his bed, definitely not a hologram and  _definitely_  not dead.

Jim sat straight up so suddenly that all the blood rushed to his head, spattering purple ink blots across his vision. " _Bones_?"

The very young and very much alive Bones rolled his eyes and grunted in a way that oozed Southern Sass™ and a doctor-prescribed dose of sarcasm.

"Yes, I'm Bones, and you're Jim, the man who's about to get his a–"

"But– you– it's been–!" Jim squawked, but his ears rang strangely at the sound of his own voice. It sounded wrong. It was definitely his, but it was also definitely wrong, and he couldn't figure out exactly what about it was wrong. But… oh. Oh, maybe he was on drugs. Maybe he really had given that speech but he had had some sort of breakdown or something and they gave him drugs and now he was riding through some nasty psychosomatic medications that he was  _probably_ allergic too. Hoo, boy, if he managed to survive this, someone was gonna get in trouble for not paying attention to his medical records before pumping him full of Mystery Drug Number Two. And, admittedly, this felt  _way_  too real to be drugs, but hey, it was far more believable than… whatever was going on here.

Bones furrowed eyebrows furrowed even further as he took in Jim's appearance. "Good  _word_ , man, what the hell is that?"

Jim drew a blank… before he followed Bones' gaze and looked down at his bare torso.

A red, irritated patch of welting skin had bloomed angrily in the middle of his chest, right under the dip of his collarbone, where… well, Jim couldn't recall what had happened there, but that wasn't really what shocked Jim.

Young, smooth, golden skin patterned with constellations of freckles. Hands that weren't grey or curling or crooked with bones that never healed correctly despite science's best efforts. The well-defined grooves of healthy, maintained muscle under his skin. Hardly any fat. A wrinkle-and-roll-free expanse of skin stretched over tight pectorals and abdominals. It was  _youth_ , and he hadn't been like this since– since–  _since Bones was alive Since Spock's hair was black Since Uhura kept her hair long Since Chekov had his baby-face Since before Sulu was made captain Since Kevin Riley found out he was JT Since Scotty was skinny Since the five year mission Since before– before– before–_

"Jim?" Bones prodded.

" _Uh_ …" Jim could feel panic pinching his sternum sharply; twisting the curves of his ribs. Oh, he was going to throw up, he could feel it. He was going to throw up on Bones.  _Oh._  Wait, wait, Bones had asked him a question. He didn't know the answer. "Had a bit of a  _mishap_ during combat training the other day."

_It's not real. It's drugs. It's drugs, it's drugs, it's drugs; I had some sort of breakdown and it's drugs._

Huffing  _huffily_ , Bones he grumbled, "Y'could've had me look at it.  _Yesterday_."

Oh. Oh, this hurt something deep inside Jim's panic-constricted chest. Bones was being  _fussy_ over him. He was  _fussing_. Bones hadn't been fussy over him in years. Jim had always had a love-hate relationship with the way Bones would be such a mother-hen, but this was just love, because  _dammit_ , Jim had missed this so much. He had  _missed_ Bones and his  _sass_  and his  _grumbling_  and his  _fussing_ so badly that it hurt too much to think about.

"It's fine. Doesn't hurt. Already on the mend." Jim made that face, that stupid, happy face that he made whenever  _everything was totally fine with him, obviously, no need to question who super-fantastic everything was_. In another few years, Bones would be able to recognize that look and call Jim out for it.  _(No, wait, no, not in a few years because this already happened decades ago, no, this was just drugs making him relive Ye Olden Academy Days.)_ "Uh… sorry, what's today?"

Man, was it getting a little difficult to breathe in here or what? Jim swallowed thickly, trying to tense against the wretched churning in his gut.

Bones rolled his eyes and threw a red jacket at the bed that Jim guessed was his own. He couldn't… remember. Not that he really cared. "It's the twenty-first, you moron. Of  _October_ , if you forgot what  _month_  it is. Lucky you, it's your day off, but I'm not lettin' you sleep all day again. You kept me up the whole damn night last time."

When Jim didn't immediately hop out of bed like the springy young person he was  _(ohmygoshthesedrugsareawesome)_ , Bones rolled his eyes, reached forward, and soundly smacked Jim on the side of the head.

"Y' _got_  that?" Bones demanded, looking especially scowly. " _I_ have a seminar to get to, but  _you_  had better get out of here while I'm gone,  _capishe_? Catch some rays, get some exercise, and eat some  _fruit_ , for Pete's sake. I dunno how you don't have scurvy, honestly. You have all the Vitamin C of a chocolate sundae, kid."

"Mm-hmm!" Jim nodded rapidly, desperate to crawl out of his own too-perfect skin and stop the oncoming panic attack he could feel buzzing in his gut.  _Never mind. Drugs suck._  "Sunshine. Exercise. Fruit. Got it."

Bones raised a dubious eyebrow. "You alright?"

"Yeah! Fine!"

They stared at each other for a moment before Bones grunted and swept out of the room with all the joy of a red-clad Grinch, the electronic swish of the automated door heralding his departure. Jim blinked at the dull chrome that lined the room.

He was in his old quarters at Starfleet Academy. The red and grey interior had a bit more vibrancy to it than Jim remembered, a bit more shine, and the room was bigger than he recalled, but he _did_ recall it. He had lived here with Bones as his roommate for all his years at the Academy. There was a coffee stain in the carpet that he remembered making. There were scratches on the walls from… well. He remembered those. He remembered the strange clash of scattered papers from Bones and his own neat files of perfectly-written essays sitting on his desk. A red dress uniform lay draped on a chair in the corner, freshly washed and free of wrinkles and sporting shiny brass buttons that would remain the style for another few decades before becoming antiquated all within Jim's lifetime.

No way was this a drug issue. Drugs couldn't make him remember something so crisply, or feel it so clearly. This was real, somehow. Somehow.

_Somehow._

The world spun and Jim rolled out of bed, dragging rumpled grey sheets with him as he landed with a dull  _thud_. He half-expected pain to go lancing up his shoulder, as it would have in his eighty-nine-year-old body, but he hardly felt the impact at all, and it certainly couldn't be called  _painful_. It might be considered mildly unpleasant, at the worst.

Clumsily kicking his legs free of the tangled fabric, Jim scrambled across the floor towards the bathroom that he and Bones shared. His breaths were coming short and fast and panic gripped him. His whole body felt trapped despite the sensation of floating. This couldn't be real, but it was. Jim could feel it. It possessed none of the fuzzy submerged quality of a dream or the hazy edges of drug-induced hallucinations or the rapid-fire feeling of flying that often came with a Vulcan mind-meld. This was too crisp and stifling to be anything but painful reality.

Jim stumbled to his feet, swaying as he entered the bathroom, and threw himself to the far side so that he could vomit into the toilet.

_I_ _**really** _ _wanted this to be drugs._

Acid burned his throat and tears burned his eyes. Everything was so hot and constricting and  _wrong_. A sob wretched its way out of Jim's mouth, followed by unbearably hot drool that compelled him to keep his mouth hanging open like an idiot. Jim gagged, spitting, even as scorching tears burned tracks along his cheeks and then fell. He shook violently, gut twisting, and he vomited again.

He couldn't  _breathe_.

After his stomach was achingly empty and the frantic sobs had eased, Jim collapsed onto the pristinely white floor and tried to get up the determination to stand and wash the acrid taste out of his mouth. He couldn't. He slowly slid down, down, down so that he was lying on his side, staring across the shiny floors at nothing, trying and failing to breathe evenly. The chill of the floor clung sharply to his bare skin, mocking him for his near-nakedness, forcing him to curl his legs up to his body for warmth. His brain buzzed uselessly, trying to summon his genius-level IQ and figure out exactly  _what_  was going on.

The wound on his chest throbbed.

_Alright_ , Jim thought, very slowly maneuvering himself up into a sitting position.  _Alright._  Academy quarters, cadet's uniform, young Bones. It was definitely the past, and there was a very small window of time that matched all the evidence, because Jim had only attended the Academy for three years. Well, three years and two months. So. The three year window was no big deal. What  _was_  a big deal was how he had gotten to the past in the first place. Jim couldn't even remember the last place he had been… unless… the speech wasn't a dream. Yes! The speech was real. He had made the speech, and then… no, he hadn't finished. There had been… an explosion? Panic, running and screaming, fire,  _where is Spock_ , the face of a dead man on–

Adon. Adon, Nero's son, had shot him point-blank in the chest with a phaser. But phasers didn't make people time travel. But Adon had said… had said…

_Adon smiled and clicked up the setting on the phaser. "I'm going to make you watch."_

That hadn't really registered with Jim at the time. Why would it? It made no sense. Adon hadn't bothered capturing any hostages except for Jim himself, and he had obviously planned on  _killing_  Jim, so making Jim watch hadn't happened. Adon shot Jim in the chest,  _zing_ , one very dead Admiral James T. Kirk coming up, thank you. But Jim wasn't dead. He was in the past with a nasty scar to show for Adon's efforts.

_"_ _I'm going to make you watch."_

Was this what Nero's crazy spawn had meant? Watch… what, the past? Had Adon cursed Jim to relive his life? To relive all of the mistakes and the death and the loss?

But it couldn't be that simple. It just couldn't. Sending Jim to the past was hardly any revenge, was it?  _Was_  it? Was this some sort of poetic justice because of Nero? No, there had to be a catch. Maybe Jim could look but not touch, being forced to watch everything happen exactly as it had without the power to stop any of it. Or maybe he was in a time loop and he would suffer through the shock of time travel over and over again. Maybe Adon had already mucked about in the past, ruined the world beyond salvation, and now Jim had to watch everything fall apart.

Jim snorted.  _I have no clue, man. Not a clue._

He was in the past and Adon had  _somehow_  done it on purpose. That was the beginning and the end of his knowledge, right there. Which was… not so good. He had nearly nothing to work with.

_Even if I knew exactly what had happened, what would I do about it?_

Jim picked himself up off the floor, finally in control of his breathing. The panic had eased somewhat, and he was more interested in getting the taste of vomit out of his mouth than he was in having a major meltdown on the floor of his bathroom. He turned the cold water on full blast in the sink and… no, never mind. This called for a long shower.

Alright, so even if he knew the details of what had happened, there really wasn't anything he could do about it. It was future technology, and without any clue of what it was or how it worked, Jim had no chance of reversing the process. And even if he _could_  reverse the process… would he want to? He was young, he was healthy; he was in the Academy. Sure, bad things were going to happen, but living through it a second time couldn't be as bad as the first time, could it? At least everybody was still  _alive_. Bones was alive. Pike was alive. Even his  _mom_ was alive. Now  _that_  was a serious mind-bender. Vulcan mind-melds could cry their unfeeling hearts out.

Shucking his shorts off, Jim stumbled into the shower stall and turned the water on full blast. He didn't care that it was still cold. He tilted his head back to catch water in his mouth, eager to wash away the acidic burn that had coated his tongue and gums. He would have laughed if he didn't think he would choke himself doing it. He had just had a total breakdown on his bathroom floor, complete with vomit and violent sobbing. He hadn't done that since… he didn't even know. Had he _ever_  done this?

Well, not this  _exactly_ , no. He hadn't.

Bones had said it was the twenty-first of October. But which October? Jim had seen three summers at the Academy. But… the room. The scratches on the wall, those had happened in his first year. The coffee stain in the carpet, he remembered that from the finals of his second year. Jim had been sailing through the tests but Bones had been pulling all-nighters for two days straight and Jim had invented this monstrous cocktail of adrenaline pills and unfiltered coffee to keep Bones awake. Oh, that had been some nasty stuff. But it was there, permanently amalgamated with the floor, and that meant that this was the third year.

_Third year in the Academy, twenty-first of October._ What had he done on the twenty-first of October…?

Who was he kidding? He had  _no clue_ what he did on the twenty-first of October. The Academy was such a small, fleeting part of his life that he had sailed through almost effortlessly. All of the day-to-day goings-on had blurred together in Jim's memory. There were a few events that still stood crystal-clear in his memory, a handful of moments that had stayed settled in his heart, but other than that, Jim just remembered… colors, feelings, distant snatches of conversations that were nothing and less to his eighty-nine-year-old self. It was hardly anything at all.

_As of today, I am officially the most clueless person on this planet._

Jim shut the water off and leaned against the tiled wall of the shower stall. The chilled surface forced him to take in a stressed breath, but it felt good. Grounding. Cold was so much better on young skin than it was on old skin. With age, cold air had only made him ache. Now the chill was refreshing. He reached up and ran a hand through his wet hair. Shorter, thicker, and probably free of any grey if he bothered to look at it. That would be nice. Pfft. Having his blond-streaked brunette sex-hair was just a perk of time travel.

_They ought to put that in the brochure._

Jim huffed at his own bad joke and peeled himself from the wall. He shook his head, scattering water droplets.

Despite throwing up less than five minutes ago, he felt pretty darn good.

_Okay, time to do the math_ , he thought as he snatched a towel off a rack and scrubbed it over his damp body. If it was the twenty-first of October in his third year, that meant that with the leftover days in October, plus November, adding the two and a half weeks of classes that would mark the end of the academic year in December before Christmas, all added up to less than two months. The rest of December would be down time, and then his fourth year would start up on January third, and everything would go relatively smoothly until the destruction of Vulcan on March third. This all gave him… just a little over four months to get his act together before Nero showed up and everything went haywire.

"… I can do that."


	3. A Phone Call to the Dead

_"_ _Did you call your mom?"_

_They were drinking. Something that, as he aged, Jim liked less and less, just because keeping his mind sharp became more and more important to him. And there were more people who didn't– they wouldn't– they thought of him as the great James T. Kirk and then they saw him nursing a bottle and would turn their nose up. Which, he supposed, was appropriate. It was no fun, ruining hero worship, but even when he went grey and wrinkled around the eyes, he never understood why_ _**he** _ _was the hero. Why did they think he was so wonderful? Didn't they know that all of the wonderfulness, all the acts they admired him for, came from the dirt? They thought it was because he was son of George Kirk, but the truth was that he was the son of no one, and that was why he was Captain James Kirk, the Hero. But nobody wanted to think that. Heroes of the Federation were supposed to be polished and inspiring from beginning to end, like George, but Jim wasn't. He couldn't be._

_Bones had stolen from Chekov's stash, again (why was that kid_ _**drinking** _ _, anyway? And Pavel was a kid, he would always be a kid, even when he got old and wrinkled, he would be a kid), and this time, it was actually vodka. Jim didn't like it._

_"_ _Well?" Bones pressed ever on, never letting go, not then and not in the past and not for one single day of all the years of their lives. "Did you?"_

_Suddenly, Kirk couldn't remember how many birthdays he had spent with Bones. The number just locked itself up tight, out of reach even though it should've been obvious. But the number didn't matter; only that, on every single birthday, Bones asked him if he called his mother. And it was a really, really stupid question._

_"_ _Nah, I'll call her tomorrow."_

_Sometimes he did it._ _**Hey mom happy birthday thanks glad you called jimmy yeah goodbye mom by jimmy love you you too.** _ _But a lot of the time, he couldn't make himself call her._

 

* * *

 

It was Day One. Day One of this freaky time traveling save-the-universe-from-all-the-bad-things event, and there were no emergencies. Nothing. Not even an essay due (and Jim was sure that there was no homework he had to worry about because he found, in his chaotically organized but immaculately tidy folders, finished essays and projects that weren't even due for another  _month_ ). It was almost too convenient. Almost. But, of course, he wouldn't complain.

There was something he wanted to do, now that he had calmed down. Well, there were a lot of things that he wanted to do, and even more things that he had to buckle down and get done whether he wanted to or not, but for an emergency-free Day One… there was something he knew he could cross of his wish list without ruffling anybody's feathers (except for, most likely, his own).

The sad thing was that Jim had to look it up. _Forgive him_ for not remembering which stupid ship his  _mother_ had been serving on during his Academy days.

He wanted to call her. He couldn't  _really_  remember the last time he had talked to her. It was hazy in his brain, too far back for him to get a hold of in his consciousness, and he couldn't recall how the conversation had went. Only that… after she died, he wished that he had said something other than whatever he said, because it wasn't good enough, of course. Nothing ever quite was, between them. Not that things had never been good, because there had been good between them. Just not good enough. Not as good as either of them deserved, anyway. Or, whether they deserved it or not (maybe not), it wasn't as good as they should have had no matter what they deserved.

So. If this all turned out to be a crazy dream (it wouldn't, he knew, but keeping that option in the back of his brain was good for… his sanity, maybe), at least it would be a dream in which he got to do something he had been dying to do (ha-ha,  _dying_ , right  _[Don't freak out again, Jim, don't freak out]_ ).

Just an audio comm.. He didn't want a visual, oh no. It would be bad enough like this, because like this… Spock would call it being emotionally compromised. Jim would call it stupid. But he was going to cry, maybe. Possibly. Most likely. And he couldn't cry in front of his mom. Not to mention that he was still… mostly undressed. He had a really fluffy towel (Scotty would be a fan of these towels; did they have these awesome towels while Scotty was in the Academy?), but that was it.

He found his mother's contact information, not in his personal files, but in Starfleet's public records. Heck, why hadn't he had that himself?

_Mom wasn't a great mom_ , Jim admitted to himself,  _but maybe_ _ **I**_ _could've tried harder._

_You shouldn't have to._ That was Uhura's voice in the back of his mind.

_Thanks, Uhura, but you wouldn't know._

He sent the call through. Thankfully, his mom's ship was close enough for a live call. If it wasn't, Jim might have put this off. He wasn't sure if he had the fortitude to send a message and then  _wait_  for who knows how long to know if his mother was even willing to talk to her son. No, that was silly. She would be willing. She was always willing to talk. She just didn't have much to say, or, like him, had so much to say and didn't know how to say it all.

The comm. panel buzzed for a few moments too long, and Jim could imagine what his mother looked like. She had to be so…  _young_ , now. A few wrinkles around her eyes and deepening her dimples. A few streaks of dignified grey in her loose curls, accentuating the pale shade of her natural blonde. A few scars that never really healed, not all the way. And, right now, she was probably hesitating in confusion at the sight of a Starfleet Academy ID on her comm. screen, fingers poised over the  _accept call_  option displayed to her.

And then the line crackled to life.

"Lieutenant Commander Winona Kirk, speaking."

_Holy_ – that was his mom. That was his  _mom_.

"Hey…" Jim grinned at nothing (grimaced?), taking measured breaths. "Mom."

There was static-filled silence on the other end of the line, a harsh intake of air, and then:

"Jimmy?"

"Yeah." Scrubbing his hands through his hair, down the side of his face, Jim tried not to… anything. Tried not to scream or cry or cut the transmission off. "Hi."

"Jimmy, why is this comm. being made on a Starfleet wave?" She sounded confused. And displeased, but mostly confused, which was a bonus for her, Jim supposed. At least she didn't sound angry, but he hadn't expected  _that_ , either. She wasn't that bad. He was just projecting a bad past onto her, most of which hadn't even happened yet, so that was majorly unfair of him, if he thought about it ( _why_  was he thinking about it?). "Are you in trouble?"

Jim snorted a little bit, trying not to laugh, because he knew that if he laughed, he would get hysterical, and he had already had enough of that for one morning. "Always, Mom, always. But, uh, no, not this time. I'm in the Academy."  _Which you'd know, if you ever bothered to check on the prodigal son. It's okay that you didn't talk to me very often. I get it. It was hard. But didn't you ever check on me?_  "Have been for three years."

_Click-click-click._  That sounded like a timer in the background. Maybe an antique clock. "I… Jimmy, I didn't know."

"I know you didn't."  _It's okay. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay_. "It's fine. I don't wanna fight. At all. I don't wanna fight, Mom."

His voice cracked, spectacularly.  _Damn._

"Jimmy, baby, what's wrong?" She suddenly sounded concerned.  _Motherly_. Oh, why couldn't they have done this before? If he had known, then, so many years ago, that he could have just called her and said whatever he needed to say, would his young, stupid self have done it?

_You were dead, Mom. You've been dead for years. And I'm old, even older than you, and we hardly ever talked, and you never would have known I was a captain if my face wasn't all over the news feeds and that hasn't even happened yet so how do I explain it?_

"Nothin'."  _You called me_ _ **baby**_ _. I can't remember the last time you did that, Mom._  "Not really. Just some, uh… we're doing a project on… Tarsus. The, uh… yeah."

He hadn't meant to say that. He hadn't meant to say anything about Tarsus. He had wanted a bland, neutral excuse, but Tarsus just… fell out of his mouth.

They had never talked about Tarsus. Not directly, anyway. Winona might not have been a good mom, but she wasn't a bad person, so when Jim came home with more scars than skin and his eyes were too big for his face and the hollows under them were dark and his skin was clinging to him like some sort of macabre, ill-made doll, Winona came to Earth for him. But they never talked about it. Kodos was 'him' and Tarsus was 'back on… there, when' and the massacre was 'when it happened' and that was the best they managed before neither of them could take it anymore. Winona went back to the cold shelter of space, the closest she could get to her husband (and, if not to him, then to the moment before her life went wrong, because that was out there, too), and Jim took the trauma of Tarsus IV like a bit between his teeth and  _pulled_.

To his mom, Jim supposed, all of that wasn't very long ago. To him, it seemed like a lifetime.

"Oh," Winona said, sounding hollow, but not in the absent way that Jim remembered hearing from her on some occasions. It was a shock. Jim had surprised her to the point that she didn't know how to react. "Is it hard to…?"

"A little bit," Jim admitted.

It was true. Not that it was hard (although maybe it was, after all this time), but that there was a project on Tarsus IV. In this upcoming term (he had checked his schedule, neatly folded into his filing system, exactly where he expected it to be), there would be a survival course based off of the conditions of Tarsus during the famine. It was worth a mountain of credits, but people rarely signed up, and those who did barely passed, if they passed at all. It was difficult, mostly because it was very accurate to the conditions of Tarsus IV (minus the actual killing of people, of course). The first time around, Jim had been too disgusted and freaked out by the course's existence to sign up. This time, he was pretty sure that he would do it. Just because the credits would get him out of some classes that he would rather not be bored through for a second time, and because he knew, without a doubt, that he could pass. Pass with flying colors, for that matter. And it would impress the all the right people and gain some respect from the ones who still thought he was Captain Pike's weird little pet project.

"But, uh… it's not so bad," Jim continued. "Weirdly therapeutic, actually. But it's, uh, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Whatcha need, baby?"

That was it. That was it. He had her. He had his mom, even if it was just for one audio comm..

"Are you gonna be Earth-side for Christmas?" he asked, hope clinging to his voice even though he didn't want it to. He hadn't planned to ask her that.

"I wasn't planning on it," Winona answered in a light tone, but Jim wasn't fooled. He could hear it, on her voice; the same tenuous hope and disbelief that he was feeling, as though she expected him to hang up on her at any moment. "But it would be easy. Would you… want to come home? To Riverside? We still own the house there."

Of course they did. It was  _George's_  house first. It was his dad's. They had lost and given up a lot of his dad's things, but not that house. They would never give up that house.

"Yes," Jim blurts out before doing any of the math, before knowing if that will even be an option. "Yes, please, we can… have Christmas at home."  _Like a real family._  "That would be perfect."

"Maybe I can get Sammy to come," his mom said, falsely casual. He could hear how close she was to sounding just about as hysterical as he felt. "Have you met the kids?"

"The–" His nephews. Right. He had met them, yes, but, not yet. Technically speaking, that is. "No. I haven't seen Sammy since the wedding."

Again, that was only by the point of view of time travel. Jim had seen his brother quite a few times and watched _the kids_ grow up into adults. But in this timeline, no. Not since the wedding.

"I'll see if I can get Sam to bring them."

"Yeah. I'll, uh – I'll see if I can get down to the house during my break and get everything cleaned up before you get there, okay?" Jim thinks that he can smell the familiar scent of home, but that's states away and absolutely impossible. Just a mind trick. "How about a real Christmas tree, huh?"

His mom made a muffled hiccupping sound and –  _oh, crap, she's crying, I didn't mean to make her cry –_  "That's great, Jimmy, really! That'll be great. I can't wait."

"I might bring a friend or two," he added, because he wasn't sure. Maybe Bones would want… or… if he could get to know some of the others, that would be great. He knew Chekov had been so lonely at the Academy, and Sulu never made many friends because he struggled through his studies, and Spock was... um…. Well, Spock was Spock. And, currently, Spock was probably unaware of his existence, which was better than how they had originally started off (mutually raging dislike bordering on hate but not quite but  _yeah_ , really close to hate), but not better by enough to justify inviting the half-Vulcan to a family event.

"That's fine, Jim." She kept saying his name and it sounded wonderful. "If we can get this together, bring– bring– bring the  _whole Academy_  with you. I don't care. Just– be there, okay?"

Jim swallowed thickly. "Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I gotta go, but… Mom?"

"Yes?"

"I love you. I love you so much."

_Too much for one call?_

"… I love you too, baby."

 

* * *

 

Jim was being weird. Which, if you knew Jim, meant nothing really out of the usual. Jim was usually a little bit odd, if one was willing to observe him. He swung through highs and lows, pretending to be perfect the whole time but simultaneously being painfully honest about his imperfections (an impossible contradiction, but that was Jim all over). Jim Kirk was unusual and for him to be acting strangely was not strange at all.

But it sure as hell did bother Bones.

Usually – _usually_ – Bones had  _some_  idea of what was going on in Jim Kirk's head. Jim was weird, no doubt about it, and he had enough emotional baggage to bring down a Klingon, but he was a surprisingly straightforward person despite all of that. After spending enough time with him, Bones almost found Jim predictable. If there was trouble, Jim got involved. If there was a bully, Jim made sure they got what was coming to them. If there was a hare-brained scheme to be pulled off, Jim was the one who usually managed to make it succeed. If there was a fight, Jim threw punches.

Weird, but predictable, if you knew him as well as Leonard McCoy did.

That was why he felt twitchy. All through his morning class, his knees bounced under his desk and his fingers fumbled over simple tasks. He was distracted, replaying Jim's odd behavior over and over in his mind. Jim, typically a chatterbox, hadn't said much. What he had said, or didn't say, seemed wrong. Jim had acted shocked to see Bones, as if he hadn't spent the whole day before at his side. Not to mention that big red welt on his just, which looked exactly like a phaser burn, which wasn't allowed in combat training, which meant that Jim was lying about how he got it. Which meant, clearly, that Jim was hiding something.

And Jim wasn't even _in_  combat training this term!

"Dammit, kid," he muttered to – well, to Jim, but Jim wasn't there, so maybe he was talking to himself.  _Bad sign._  But, then again, Bones was prone to that sort of… thing.

He just had to get through one more hour of this lecture, and then he could go check on Jim. Just one more hour…

But Jim could get himself  _killed_  in an hour, or worse.

_Kid, if you die, I'm gonna kill you._

 

* * *

 

_I should actually make some sort of plan_ , Jim thought, because, despite the misconception that he flew into everything by the seat of his pants, good planning was key to having lived for so long in the disease-ridden darkness and silence of space ( _Bones, stop it_ ).

Of course he should make a plan. He needed a plan. That was a given. He couldn't afford to screw this up; he didn't _dare_  take the chance of screwing this up. But, immediately? He didn't think so. He could relax for a few days before he got down to business. He could enjoy being young a careless for a little while and leave the fate of the galaxy to itself until he adjusted. So, for the first time in his eighty-nine years, he decided that he wouldn't fight McCoy's advice on his health.

_"_ _Catch some rays, get some exercise, and eat some_ _**fruit** _ _, for Pete's sake."_

That was what Bones said, and Jim honestly wanted to do it. In fact, that was _all_  he wanted to do. He hadn't been able to stretch without hurting his joints for years. He wanted to run and see if he was as fast and as strong as he remembered being. He wanted to laze about under the sunshine. He wanted to talk to people without being the famous Admiral Kirk.

Food first, though. He had sort of vomited what very little was in his stomach (and then proceeded to dry-heave, which was painful,  _wow_ ), and now he felt very, very empty, and an empty stomach did not a happy Jim Kirk make.

He had that feeling, though. That tingly, Bones-is-going-to-find-me-and-yell-at-me-in-southern-even-though-I-don't-know-what-I-did-wrong feeling. He had started getting them about a year into their five-year mission and he never forgot that feeling, even  _years_  after Bones died. But Bones was alive, know, and that meant that the feeling was legit. Somewhere on the Academy campus, Bones was on the prowl to find and lecture and maybe even  _hypospray_  James T. Kirk.

_Food and_ _ **escape**_ , Jim decided, and made a run for the cafeteria.

He missed getting Southern Sass™ from Bones, but he didn't miss it enough to subject himself to an Angry Doctor Lecture.


End file.
